Article Keyword Research – Going Where The Traffic Is

Recently I was doing article keyword research and I spotted an almost perfect long tail keyword in my niche. It’s related to an annoying problem everyone who runs a WordPress website or does web design encounters – comment spam.

What caught my eye was 1900 searches per month in the US, and 5400 globally. And, importantly, zero competition. Yep, not one article out there actually focused on this keyword phrase.

You see, I’d just been looking at my Google Analytics, figuring out where traffic was coming from. I was focusing particularly on keywords, and the lesson was clear that people are looking for what they want, not what I think they want! Some of my greatest sources of traffic were obscure (but relevant) keywords with little or no competition.

The Easiest Way to Improve Your Website Traffic For Free

In short, as I was reminded of a very fundamental rule of web development: Do your article keyword research before you chose what to write about!

I searched for How to * in wordpress. The asterisk is a wildcard, and the tool substitutes for the wildcard to create a list of long tail keyword phrases that have been searched for. I had about 145 results. Since Keyword Researcher doesn’t give me traffic numbers, it was time to move to another tool.

Then I Checked Traffic and Competition

Step two in my article keyword research was to check these keywords for traffic and competition in the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. By the way, you can only check up to 100 phrases at a time, unless you create an Adwords account and log in.

I noticed that there were a bunch of related long tail keywords, and they had some of the best numbers… although they were still very low, ranging from 16 to 360 local searches per month. Obviously there was demand for information on this topic, and the competition numbers were low.

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However, when I looked beyond my Search Terms and into the Keyword Ideas adwords generated, I noticed the “wordpress disable comments” phrase you can see in the image above. Now those traffic numbers are excellent, with no competition! I decided to use some of the other related keyword phrases in the article, as well.

Finally, I Wrote my Article

Of course I used proper SEO copywriting techniques to ensure that my writing effort won’t be wasted. A few weeks after I publish it, I can be confident of regular traffic. In fact, if I rank #1 for the keyword phrase, which I expect to, I should get about 42% of the traffic… that’s an extra 798 US visitors per month (2268 globally), that I can assist, and who will learn that I’m accurate, helpful, and knowledgeable about WordPress.

I”m not suggesting that you’ll want to do article keyword research for everything you write, but if even half your blog posts and articles were created this way, many more people would benefit from your writing. And, of course, if the articles are on your website, you’ll see improved traffic.

What’s A Blog Post or Article Worth?

Is Article Keyword Research Really Worth $2400 Per Post?

Well, if you write useful, timeless content that appeals to your target audience, it can be worth quite a bit over the lifetime of your business website. Steve Pavlina wrote an article back in 2006, estimating the lifetime value of each article he writes on his personal growth website at $2400. Does that help you feel a bit more motivated about article keyword research?

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About the author

Karilee

I'm a big fan of entrepreneurship. Most of my learning, teaching and business is focused on effectively creating "freedom businesses" that allow you to focus on your strengths, and bring what you're really good at to the world - profitably.
My clients are looking for more of the right customers - and I show them how to make that happen. I help them develop their web presence through their website, SEO, social media and other marketing tactics.

7 Responses to Article Keyword Research – Going Where The Traffic Is

Thanks for the insights into the mysteries of how to write our articles to attract some traffic to it. Often I feel as though I write in a fish bowl…and wonder if I’m helping anybody at all with my articles. With a little more work on the front end following your suggestions I hope to have more people find me, and ultimately get some dialogue going.

I think one of the things this post presents is that when it comes to driving traffic to your website content remains one of the most important aspects.

While a lot of people say focus on topics which are general in nature as more people will be likely to be able to relate this post provides a very significant push towards writing very specific posts with a specific target.

While you might not get traffic which is as wide spread through this method you are going to score much higher in the search listings.

A general topic post might get you a lot of traffic early on but it will pass quickly and result in shorter visitor time onsite. A very specific post will last longer in the search engines at high levels.

So the question is which is more important 50 visitors a day for a week on a general topic of 3 visitor a day for the next 5 years on a very specific topic.Avery Z Chipka recently posted..Starbucks Updates Reward Program

Hey, Avery, thanks for following me home! Only on the web is that a good thing…

I think generally planning the article for the long term is the best plan, but I’m sometimes I just write what I feel like, of course. If the creativity all gets squeezed out, it’s just work. What I hope I convey in these articles is that good SEO doesn’t have to crush your creativity when writing. On the contrary – I find it easier to be creative with a wealth of topics to cover, and knowing that some people will actually find them, due to good keyword research and SEO.

These is the first time that I have read article regarding on how to built a traffic about keyword researching. These can help people in order to attain generated traffic they want.TracyAnn0312 recently posted..רפלקסולוגיה

I write articles and blogs but was unaware of this technique of using “article keyword research”. Till now i just wrote articles on the latest topics of my interest, didn’t know how to get traffic through them. Thank You for this informative post. It is of great help to me.Elena Gilbert recently posted..Driving Profitability For Our Clients Around The Globe

Jack
February 27, 2013

Keyword analysis is a very important part of seo and content writing. It is obvious that if you are writing for a keyword with high competition, but less traffic, you are not going to make much profit from your writing. While if you focus on writing for keywords having less competition, but high demand in your niche, you can get much more traffic. Google keyword tool is a nice and free tool for keyword analysis.Jack recently posted..Driving Profitability For Our Clients Around The Globe

Thanks for this post and breaking down the process about article writing. I find myself in exactly the same situation a lot. Finding ideas and converting them into good and high traffic articles is not always an easy taks.

To get ideas from the crerative part of the mind i often combine 3 totally independent topics. One major topic .. like for example learn forex trading (since this is my niche) and 2 minor topics like vacation and maybe an animal.

This way i can create an interesting story which has some uncommon structure to keep the reader interested. Maybe this is helpful to someone.